


Upgraded

by servantofclio



Series: Julian Shepard [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9677084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: Tali tries to convince Shepard that resurrection isn't so bad, in a way an engineer understands.(Mild flirtation, mentions of past Shepard/Ashley.)





	

“Getting settled in okay?” 

The unexpected voice made Tali startle so hard that she nearly whacked her head on the cabinet in the galley. She’d been bending over to stash her supplies of protein paste in the compartment marked DEXTRO FOOD ONLY, after adding a note to her pile of containers that said _Garrus, if you eat this, I will make you pay_.

The interruption also made her heart pound, but the voice was familiar and not unwelcome. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and straightened, closing the compartment. 

Shepard leaned one shoulder against the bulkhead that separated the galley from the corridor beyond. He must have just come around from the elevator while Tali was bent over.  “I am,” she said. “I’ve been looking around. There’s a lot more space on this ship than on the first _Normandy_.” Even fewer crew, which made the space seem so terribly wasteful. The drive core was a lot more powerful, though, she’d had a long talk with Joker about that. 

But there was also the AI, shackled or not, and the Cerberus symbols etched all over everything, and the six surveillance devices she’d removed from the engineering area alone. None of those said “safe” to Tali. 

Shepard shrugged one shoulder. “They built a good ship, I’ll give them that. Still miss the old one, though. I suppose I should have given this one a different name, but...” He trailed off, his eyes drifting toward the deck. 

“I think it’s all right,” Tali said. “It’s a good name, and it’s your ship.” She smiled, knowing he wouldn’t see it, but hoping he could tell anyway. “At least some things haven’t changed?” 

“Hm?” He looked up. “Oh, yeah. Late shift, and here we both are.” 

On the chase for Saren, late shifts had usually found both of them up, tinkering with their omni-tools to settle down before going to sleep. The ship had been so cramped that they’d commandeered space on the crew deck. Sometimes Kaidan or Garrus had joined them, all of them comparing the latest mods, arguing about which Savant or Polaris was the better base model. Sometimes Ashley had lounged alongside, rolling her eyes and pronouncing them “incurable nerds.” 

Tonight, the area seemed large and bright and empty with just the two of them, but Tali was glad to see Shepard smile. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Though I’m sorry about your team.” 

Tali shook her head; she didn’t want to talk about Haestrom, not now. “I’m sorry I couldn’t join you earlier.” 

He shrugged, smile fading. “You had other responsibilities. I understand.” 

“I know, but I still wish I could have come to help.” If it hadn’t been for the need to see Veetor safely back home, Tali would have more tempted to stay. She added, “I’m glad Garrus is here, at least.” How, exactly, Garrus had gotten there was a story she’d have to pry out of one of them eventually; Garrus hadn’t answered any of _her_ messages in months. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without Garrus,” Shepard said, serious. 

“Oh, don’t say that while he’s around. His ego is big enough.” 

Shepard laughed at that, so Tali laughed, too, and took a seat at one of the tables. When she waved a hand, Shepard pushed himself away from the wall and took the chair opposite. 

“Have you heard from any of the others?” Tali asked, folding her hands together. “Liara, or Wrex?” 

Shepard shook his head. “We’re headed to Illium next. Liara’s supposed to be there, working for the Shadow Broker, or something.” 

Tali frowned. “That doesn’t sound right to me. She told me she’d become an information broker, and she’s been a little vague in her letters, but I don’t know about her working for the Shadow Broker.” 

“You’ve had messages from her?” 

“Oh, on and off ever since…” Tali cut herself off and checked her omni-tool for the message log. “I had the last one, hm, looks like about three months back?” 

“Well, okay.” Shepard looked thoughtful. “We’ll try to meet up with her when we get there. It would be good to get her back on the team. As for Wrex, no, I haven’t heard anything.” 

“I haven’t, either. I think he went back to Tuchanka, and, well. They don’t exactly have reliable communications down there.” 

Shepard snorted. “Right.” 

Tali hesitated, fearing she was about to step on a delicate subject, but the question seemed far too obvious not to ask. “What about Ashley?” 

Shepard’s face closed up swiftly, and he pulled himself upright in his chair. “Ash... yeah. We ran into Ash.” 

“Ran into?” Tali asked, bewildered. That sounded far too casual to make any sense. 

Shepard’s mouth tightened. His eyes darted to the side while he drummed his fingers on the table, but he answered after only a moment. “Not that long ago, before we set out for Haestrom. We got a tip that one of the fringe human colonies in the Terminus had gone dark, so we went to check it out. The tip was good; Collectors were there in force.” 

“And Ashley?” Tali asked warily. 

Shepard seemed to notice his twitching fingers and folded his arms over his chest instead. “Turned out she was stationed there. Alliance liaison, trying to install better colony defenses. Getting nothing but shit from the colonists, it sounded like, but...” He took a breath. “Anyway. We found her, or she found us, in the middle of cleaning up the mess. The Collectors had retreated already, but they’d taken half the colony with them. Ash was... not real happy.” 

“About the colonists? Or... she wasn’t happy to see you?” Tali asked, trying to get it straight. She had a hard time imagining one of the crew not being happy to learn Shepard was alive. 

Shepard’s mouth twitched. “Neither, really. To be honest, I can’t really blame her. I disappear for two years without a word, and I come back working with Cerberus? That’s a lot to swallow.” 

“Oh. Well...” Tali had to admit she’d wrestled with the same problem herself in the months since she’d seen Shepard on Freedom’s Progress. “I mean... you don’t exactly have a lot of options.” 

Shepard shook his head. “That’s not much of an excuse. Ash isn’t wrong. I’m collaborating with monsters and murderers, turning my back on the Alliance. For all she knows, I was Cerberus all along.” 

“Shepard, no. Someone has to help these colonies and stop the Collectors. Your Alliance doesn’t seem to be doing it.” 

“They can’t get involved in the Terminus systems,” Shepard muttered. “Anderson told me so himself.” 

“So who else is going to do it?” Tali asked. 

Shepard’s shoulders rose and fell. He sighed heavily. “No one besides this crew of reprobates, I guess. It’s all right. I can sell out my honor in a good cause. I can’t expect Ash to do the same, though.”  

“I guess,” Tali said doubtfully. “Didn’t you explain to her? That’s you’re not really _with_ Cerberus? That you were... hurt?” _Dead_ , she reminded herself, or as good as dead. Whatever else they’d done, Cerberus had brought him back. Somehow. 

“I didn’t have much of a chance. She told me she was Alliance through and through, and she didn’t want anything to do with any of this. Then she walked off.” 

Tali gaped. She remembered only too well how Ashley had felt about Shepard. How could she just turn her back? “I... um. I don’t understand. Cerberus hurt the fleet, too, but...” 

Shepard shrugged again. “You know Ash. Once her mind’s made up, there’s not much changing it.” 

Tali shook her head. “Even so. I know... er, I know how close you were.” 

“Oh.” Shepard rubbed the back of his neck. “Garrus did, too. Guess we weren’t as subtle as we thought.” 

It was Tali’s turn to shrug at that. “I don’t know, I wasn’t sure until she talked to me about it.” 

“Ah. Anyway, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that we were... um, involved, just makes it worse,” Shepard muttered. He leaned one arm on the table. “Tell me the truth, Tali, would you have heard me out if we hadn’t had a situation to deal with, back on Freedom’s Progress?” 

Tali answered without hesitation. “Of course I would have.” 

“Huh.” 

“We’re friends, Shepard. Of course I would listen to you before passing judgment. Even with Cerberus involved.” Before Freedom’s Progress, if someone had posed the question to her as a hypothetical, she might have answered differently. But she couldn’t see or hear Shepard and not at least give him a hearing. 

“You’re that sure? How could you be sure it’s really me, though?” He watched her steadily. “You weren’t, when you first saw me.” 

“But I listened to you,” Tali pointed out. She could still remember the shock that had coursed through her when she saw him in that familiar armor. She couldn’t help but be shocked; Shepard had been dead for nearly two years. She’d had more than enough time to mourn and move forward with her life. 

None of that meant she wasn’t glad to have him back, glad to the tips of her toes. On Freedom’s Progress, every word he’d said, every move he’d made had only made her more certain that he really was Shepard, come back from the dead. 

He was still watching her, dark eyes unblinking. She couldn’t read his expression, which probably meant he was skeptical, and trying not to show it. Tali sighed loudly. “I thought you were dead, Shepard, and then you show up out of nowhere? Yes, I was surprised. But I recognized you, and I listened. You knew I’d have questions; that’s why you told me things no one else would have known.” 

He nodded slowly. “And that was enough for you?” 

“It was enough for me to keep listening.” Tali thought back to that awful, amid the silent, abandoned colony. “I don’t know if it was any one thing, Shepard. You sounded like yourself, and acted like yourself. You showed up when I least expected it to help me.” _Again_ , she reminded herself. “You’re... you sure seem like Shepard to me.” 

“Even in a Cerberus uniform?” he muttered, closing his hand into a fist. 

“Uniforms are just uniforms.” Tali hesitated, cocking her head. “Do you really think you’re... not Shepard?” 

“I don’t know.” He spread his hand out again. “I feel like me. But I used to have scars, here, from the thresher maw. Had them for years.” 

“I remember.” Back on the old _Normandy_ , she’d seen the mottled marks of acid burns tracking up his arm, when he’d rolled his sleeves up. The skin was smooth now, except for those funny little fine human hairs. “They grew new skin?” 

“Yeah.” He waved his other hand toward his face. “Apparently it’s not holding together that well.” 

She hummed in sympathy; the cracked and fissured skin, glimmering with nanomesh beneath the surface, didn’t look comfortable. “Does it hurt?” 

“Not really,” he said. “They put me back together, all right, but I can’t tell how much is original material.” 

“Shepard.” Tali had never seen him in a mood like this, and it worried her. She reached over and put her hand on his arm, trying to think of something to say that might help. “Shepard, how much have you modded your omni-tool?” 

His eyebrows twitched. “Well, this one’s new, and I haven’t had much free time to work on it.” 

“I didn’t mean this one, I meant in general.” 

“Plenty, I guess.” He frowned, trying to guess where she was going. 

“So, we both do this, right? We upgrade programs and introduce mods and change out hardware until it barely resembles a factory model.” 

“Yeah, I guess so,” Shepard said warily. 

“So, it’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?” She squeezed his arm. “Maybe they grew you new skin, and some other parts. People do clone organs all the time. And cybernetic augmentation, you said,  right? But you can mod your omni-tool all you want, and it’s still your omni-tool, and you’re still the same Shepard, underneath.” 

His eyebrows twitched again, and he pressed his lips together. “I’m really not sure how I feel about that analogy, Tali.” 

“Well...” Tali thought back on what she’d said, and squirmed. “Keelah, I just meant... not that you’re some kind of tool or device, or anything like that...” 

Shepard burst out laughing. Tali groaned and let go of his arm, prepared to curl up in embarrassment. Why did anyone let her talk at all? 

Shepard reached over and caught her hand before she could withdraw it entirely. “I appreciate the thought, Tali.” 

She let out a breath, hoping she hadn’t messed up entirely. “What I was trying to say is, you’re still you, if you’re a little... upgraded. And I still trust you. Cerberus or no.” 

“Thanks,” he said. “That really does mean a lot.” Their eyes held for a moment, and then he shook his head. “Sorry. This is an awfully conversation for this hour, huh? I’ll tell you, Tali, sometimes I just don’t even know what I’m doing here.” 

“Helping people?” Tali suggested. “Saving the galaxy all over again?” 

“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound certain about it. He sighed and squeezed her hand before releasing it. “Shitty situation when Cerberus is our best shot at saving these colonies.” 

“I completely agree,” Tali said, briefly wishing he hadn’t let go. “I guess we’ll just have to save them in spite of Cerberus, though.” 

Shepard’s smile was a quick flash. “I guess we will.”


End file.
